I tend to mark harsher then most people, so my 7 still means HyperRogue is actually a rather cool game for what it is, especially if you get it on sale. I'm therefore disappointed neither critics nor players have reviewed it here in the full year since it was released, and will have to fill in myself.
In short, it's a simultaneous turn-based roguelike/roguelite with a heavy focus onI tend to mark harsher then most people, so my 7 still means HyperRogue is actually a rather cool game for what it is, especially if you get it on sale. I'm therefore disappointed neither critics nor players have reviewed it here in the full year since it was released, and will have to fill in myself.
In short, it's a simultaneous turn-based roguelike/roguelite with a heavy focus on exploration. You move on a grid of vaguely hexagonal shapes (they are brownish and more sand-like in the Desert, for instance, while looking exactly like leaves for the Jungle/Dry Forest/etc.), collecting zone-specific treasure as it appears and fighting equally zone-specific enemies who move at the same time as you do. This combat is very simple: you always die in one hit, but so do (the vast majority) of enemies. Moreover, the game will prevent you from going into a waiting enemy's range and making any other moves that will kill you: up until the point such moves become unavoidable as you're surrounded. The grid wraps around a sphere so that it always looks like you're on a planet: moreover, it can and will expand indefinitely as you move through it. Move in any given direction through any zone for a while and you will find entrances to other zones, which is where the fun lies.
This last part cannot be underestimated: pretty much the only real way to enjoy HyperRogue is to collect about 10 treasure per zone to get an achievement (25, if you want the second, and last, achievement) and move onto the next one. This is because there are a lot of cool, different zones, but (Palace aside), they reveal all their unique content in about a minute of exploring: there's usually a treasure type, 2/3 enemy types, 1/2 obstacle types and 1/2 magical orb types (could be active or passive). Staying in any zone for long does not unlock any new content for that zone, it simply spawns more and more enemies to eventually overwhelm you. Sadly, you cannot tame any zone to your will, no matter how much you want to kill off the Yetis in the starting Ice Land, or to cut your path through every single vine in the Jungle.
Instead, though, you get to enjoy the quirks of those zones along with other immediately available ones: Eternal Motion, which lacks obstacles and has only one enemy type, but where floor tiles collapse after every move, Alchemist's Lab, split into red and blue tiles, which you can only cross through killing Slime Beasts and thus changing the floor colour, Desert with Spice and nigh-immortal Dune worms, and Living Cave where the biggest danger is being trapped forever as trolls' bodies create new walls if killed near one.
Get a total of 30 across those, and you unlock the new stuff like many aquatic zones requiring boats to travel in (eventually leading up to the Cthulhu level), aforementioned Palace (has original 16-bit Prince of Persia-style guards and Vizier, you can win the whole run by finding a Princess/Prince in it), and most esoterically, a Minefield level that has no enemies in it because it's literally Minesweeper.
In all, it's a fun game once you figure out the best way to play it, though you still wish there were other ways to do so. So much of the fun in traditional roguelikes like Nethack and A.D.O.M is about going through the insane hurdles to grow from someone barely defeating jackals and easily ended by bees' poison, to going toe-to-toe with angels and demons, after all. In HyperRogue, you do not grow at all, and that sadly prevents it from being little more than a coffee break game.… Expand
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